| Alcatel 10G GPON: Now on Sale |
| Written by Dave Burstein | |
| Sunday, 13 February 2011 16:02 | |
 Very few of the million or so installed GPON hubs have congestion problems so it's early to see much demand for 10 gig GPON. But when Huawei did a demonstration with Verizon of 10G, I believe Alcatel needed an answer. They now are the first to announce commercial availability of 10G GPON on their ETSI model. GPON architecture has proven cheap and reliable, so carriers with GPON experience are using it for jobs like backhaul from remote DSL terminals and mobile cell sites. That's a niche market but an expanding one. For example, AT&T this year intends to run fiber to 15,000 cell sites and GPON is one of the architectures they've looked at. Extra capacity from 10G may be valuable there.
Alcatel and Huawei are generally the first two in most broadband markets, including GPON and DSL. They struggle for mindshare as well as customers. In bonded DSL, the dueling press releases almost became a joke. As I wrote in October,
Here's the press release.
Alcatel-Lucent's ISAM Introduces Industry-First Commercial 10G GPON Support
Available on existing and new, market-leading 100Gbps high-capacity shelves Paris, February 3, 2011 – Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced that it has reached an important milestone in supporting the deployment of next-generation fiber technologies. With the introduction of the latest release of its Intelligent Services Access Manager (ISAM) IP access platform, Alcatel-Lucent becomes the first company to move from the “trial and demonstration” stage to commercial availability of 10G GPON. The introduction of 10G GPON will radically change end-users’ broadband service experience - not only by accommodating higher upstream and downstream bandwidths for existing fiber subscribers, but also by significantly accelerating the implementation of the various universal broadband programs set up around the world. Accelerating broadband for all Translating Alcatel-Lucent’s 10G GPON trial experience into mass-market deployable products, the ISAM now supports significantly higher speeds over operators’ installed GPON infrastructure -- up to 10Gbps downstream and 2.5Gbps upstream. These higher speeds benefit business users, and also provide residential subscribers with a richer, more interactive experience. “But even more important to our service provider customers, is the fact that this technology innovation supports the various Digital Agenda, Broadband Stimulus and Universal Broadband initiatives around the world, aimed at the rapid extension of the socio-economic benefits from very high-speed broadband services,” commented Dave Geary, Head of Alcatel-Lucent’s Wireline activities. “Alcatel-Lucent’s ISAM support of 10G GPON enables dense residential fiber-to-the-home deployments as well as the bandwidths required to accommodate mobile cell site and fiber-to-the-building backhaul to help our customers extend universal broadband coverage. Our 10G GPON solution enables service providers to continue to leverage the largest installed base of IP access nodes in the world – while preserving the existing GPON outside plant,” he added. Alcatel-Lucent’s 10G GPON technology is available on the existing (ETSI) ISAM products, as well as on a new set of market-leading, high-capacity shelves. The latter provide dual 100Gbps capacity per slot to accommodate mass-market, high-capacity fiber deployments. The ISAM’s density, capacity and technology flexibility - including xDSL, VDSL2, GPON, point-to-point fiber, and now also 10G GPON and EPON - gives operators a wide choice of access nodes perfectly matching any deployment model. |